Thursday, June 11, 2015

Fans at the Mary Poppins Umbrella Festival and Be-In at El Camino Park in Palo Alto, on Sunday, July 2, 1967. The photo by Bill Howell is from the Stanford Daily of July 4 '67.

It is a classic trope of Grateful Dead historians to recall and describe their first Grateful Dead show. I can recall my first Grateful Dead show, a little bit, but if I had not spent many years trying to track it down, it might have been largely forgotten until now. Over the years, I confirmed bits and pieces of information about the show, but other facts were contradictory or uncertain. Indeed, my research was more archaeological than historical, taking a few known details and attempting to construct a complete picture.

Some Historiography
I will deal with the history of the history of the Palo Alto Be-In in my appendix, in the interests of college professors who care about such things. However, a few key points are worth making at the beginning of this post. In 1972, I got an FM radio of my own, and my musical world expanded. I promptly listened to all my older sisters LPs, and I rapidly decided that the Grateful Dead were my favorite group. Within a few months, I recalled that I had already seen the Grateful Dead. I remembered that when I was 9 years old, my family had gone to El Camino Park, Palo Alto's oldest park (ca. 1914) and seen the Grateful Dead at a free Be-In. I distinctly recalled the park and the psychedelically painted drumset, along with hippie girls painting people's faces. This wasn't really a recovered memory, since it had only been five years earlier. I asked my older sister about it, and she recalled that the Dead had played "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl."

Whenever a performance date in Grateful Dead history is disputed, readers reflexively cite existing sources. In this case, however, every single citation has me as a source, without exception. The first Grateful Dead list that circulated were from the Paul Grushkin Book Of The DeadHeads, which was based on Dennis McNally's current list at the time (and itself based on the Janet Soto list). More informally, a list compiled by John Dwork circulated amongst various people. I had told both Dennis McNally and John Dwork about having seen the Grateful Dead in Palo Alto in 1967, and that is why early lists say "June 1967" without a date. I also made sure that the editors of Deadbase knew about it, and that is why "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" appears in Deadbase setlists for the Palo Alto Be-In (dated "June-xx-1967").

Once the Internet was fully operational, I made an extended effort to identify the exact date of the Palo Alto Be-In. Indeed, in a lot of ways, searching out dates such as this was one of the reasons I started this blog. In any case, for reasons I will detail below I came to the conclusion that the likely date of the Palo Alto Be-In was Saturday, June 24, 1967. Subsequently, this date has been accepted as definitive and circulated in various sources, such as Dead.net. I can say confidently that I was the source, not just because I was the only person interested, but because since I now know the date was wrong, I can say with certainty that no one independently confirmed my research.

Free Sounds, Free Snacks, Free Sun Highlight Be-InSunday the Free University and The Experiment staged their Mary Poppins Umbrella Festival and Be-In
at Palo Alto Park from 1 to 6 p.m. The action started promptly at 1:00
with four bands, the Anonymous Artists, the New Delhi River Band, the
Solid State, and the Good Word supplying entertainment for the crowd.
Gradually listeners grew from a few hundred to a few thousand. Beads,
flowers, headbands, bells, painted faces, and multi-colored clothing
were in abundance on Be-In
participants. Smiles and happy laughter came from all directions during
the easy-going afternoon. Free oranges and punch were provided by the
Free University and The Experiment, while wandering participants also
gladly surrendered their refreshments to those around them. One incident
which marred the pleasant atmosphere of the Festival occurred when a
policeman found a young man with an American flag draped casually over
his shoulder. He was beckoned aside by the policeman who took the flag
away and inspected it for possible stains or tears. However, the
flag-bearer ran away at the first opportunity, leaving the officer with
the flag.

The highlight of the afternoon came at 4:30 when the Grateful
Dead stepped on stage. As the group launched into "Dancing in the
Street," the crowd of 4,000 moved closer to the stage. After coaxing
from the "Dead," some of the crowd started dancing in a large circle,
holding hands and swirling around. Snake dance lines wound through the
crowd while tamborines, marracas, kazoos, and bells kept the beat of the
music. The "Dead" kept up the performance for about a half hour, and
then promised to come back for more. After they left the stage, the
audience settled down and listened to some blues and more psychedelic
music from the other bands. At the Be-In, the Free University provided tables for class enrollment and sold copies of various underground publications.

The typical Be-In crowd was on hand Sunday at El Camino Park. The crowd includes those who are seriously involved in the aims of FUPA and The Experiment and the clean-cut teenagers who wish they had the guts and don't.

A cryptical poster for the May 14, 1967 Be-In at Alma Park in San Jose, featuring Country Joe and The Fish, The New Delhi River Band, Sweet Smoke, The Anonymous Artists Of America and Wakefield Loop

Palo Alto and Stanford University were less politically explosive than UC Berkeley across the bay, but no less embedded in the 1960s. There were two main activist groups in the Palo Alto area. One was called "The Experimental Group", or sometimes just "The Experiment," based at Stanford University. There was also a group of people who founded the Mid-Peninsula Free University, known as the MFPU, and colloquially as "Free U." Both of these groups were trying to provide what they saw as a relevant, alternative education not constrained by the traditional boundaries of a University. While The Experiment was based on campus, and Free U off campus, many of the participants were the same people. The instructors for both movements included both University Professors and regular people in the community. By early 1967, The Experiment and MPFU had merged, and they decided to hold a Be-In in Palo Alto as a fundraiser.

Since the network news had covered the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park, the music industry caught the wave, and it all led to the Monterey Pop Festival on the weekend of June 16-18, 1967. All of the San Francisco bands, with only the barest of record sales, if that, were high profile guests with hip acts from London, Los Angeles and New York. Attendance at the Monterey Fairgrounds was somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000, far more than anyone had anticipated. After Monterey Pop ended, the Dead's crew cheerily absconded with the rented Fender amps. According to Rock Scully and a few others, they used the amps to put on free concerts for a short while. The Palo Alto Be-In was clearly one of these events. After a while, Scully contacted Fender and told them in which warehouse their borrowed amps were located, and invited them to pick them up. Scully thoughtfully added, "if you're going to San Francisco, be sure to where flowers in your hair."

Just a few days earlier, on June 28, 1967, the New Delhi River Band had played a lunch time show at the ritzy Cabana Hyatt House on El Camino Real. History has no record of who was Miss Boutique

From the photos, we can see pictures of the Grateful Dead performing, along with another group, The Anonymous Artists Of America. According to an eyewitness from an earlier post of mine on this subject the AAA (as they were known) came on after the Dead. Given the newspaper article, it makes sense that the Dead played from about 4-30-5:00pm, and then the AAA came on to end the event. So it seems that the photographer arrived at the show with the Dead, and stayed until the end, which is why there are no photos of the earlier bands. [update: careful analysis from a Commenter shows that the photographer must have been there the whole time, but he seems to have focused on the Dead. There appear to have been several other bands, but not pictures of all of them performing. Two bands preceded the Dead, neither of them NDRB or Solid State. AAA seems to have been after the Dead, and there was at least one other band after that, but impossible to discern more than that. There was also a peculiar band playing ornate marching band instruments that performed from a flatbed truck).

The Anonymous Artists Of America were formed by a bunch of Stanford University dropouts. They had an electronic music device, a sort of primitive synthesizer called a Buchla Box, designed by electronic music pioneer Don Buchla. The AAA lived in a giant, crumbling mansion in the San Bruno Mountains that used to belong to a railroad baron. The AAA weren't really very good at their instruments, by their own admission, but they focused on being creative. The AAA was very hooked into the Prankster/Underground scene, and indeed they had performed at the infamous Acid Test Graduation on Halloween 1966.

The AAA also played regularly at The Barn in Scotts Valley. Often the New Delhi River Band would headline Friday nights, while the AAA would headline on Saturday. The members of AAA are pretty obscure today, but one of the singers was Jerry Garcia's wife Sara. After Jerry and Sara had split up, Sara--a Stanford dropout herself--had left the Pranksters and joined up with the AAA. So it was no surprise to see them at the Palo Alto Be-In.

I have to assume that The New Delhi River Band and Solid State started off the Be-In. [update: a careful look at the complete photo set shows that the first two bands were neither New Delhi River Band nor The Flowers. So there must have been more groups, and those two might have come on at the end, after The Dead and AAA. It's plain that the Daily writer didn't really know, and was taking someone else's word for everything but the Dead performance he witnessed]. If it really started at 1:00, and the Dead came on at 4:30. something else must have filled up some time. Palo Altans who attended many of the El Camino Park Be-Ins have the traditionally vague memories, and they recall seeing Timothy Leary, Eldridge Cleaver and others speaking at them. However, I don't know which events they might have been. More likely, speakers from the Free U filled up time between acts.

Solid State was the new name of a local psychedelic jazz rock band formerly called The Flowers (sometimes just Flower). They had been hooked in with Ken Kesey, not surprisingly, since tenor saxophonist Paul Robertson was one of Ken Kesey's attorneys. Another member of Solid State was bassist Gordon Stevens, whose family ran Stevens Music in San Jose (at 1202 Lincoln Ave in the Willow Glen neighborhood), where all the San Jose band like The Syndicate Of Sound got their gear. For much of the Spring, The Flowers had been the house band at The Poppycock, Palo Alto's first psychedelic club. Even I don't know anything about The Good Word.

So the Grateful Dead came on at 4:30, per the Stanford Daily. This makes sense to me, too. My family must have heard about it somehow, and while my Dad didn't really care about rock music he was interested in culture. If there was an interesting cultural event happening a mile from our house, then he was intetested. So it makes sense that we got there at 4:00 or something, and heard the Grateful Dead play, and then left. Based on the review, and my sister's memory, perhaps the Dead only played "Dancing In The Streets" and "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl."

An MPFU newsletter that advertised a June 23, 1968 El Camino Park Be-In featuring The Sons Of Champlin, Charlie Musselwhite and Berkeley's Notes From The Underground

The MidPeninsula Free University had a tumultuous history, but it pretty well came to an end by 1971. David Nelson and then Dave Torbert had joined Jerry Garcia in the New Riders Of The Purple Sage. A close look at the Be-In photos shows John Dawson hanging out backstage, so he was there, too. So not only the Dead, but some other people at the El Camino Park Be-In went on to rock stardom, even if the AAA, the New Delhi River Band, The Good Word and Solid State are largely lost in the mists of time.

There were only two more rock events at El Camino Park. In 1972 there was a concert featuring the Indian Fusion group Shanti. And on June 8, 1975, Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders headlined at El Camino Park over Kingfish and the Rowan Brothers. The concert was not free, but it was a mellow event by all accounts. Did Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Dave Torbert recall that they had played before, for free, on a Summer's Day in 1967?

Appendix: Historiographical Error Log
Since all the information about the Palo Alto Be-In comes from me, I thought I would briefly parse out how I came to my earlier incorrect conclusions. In a post some years ago, I proposed that the correct date was Saturday, June 24, 1967, and the groups were the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and The Holding Company and The Sons of Champlin.

Because of Rock Scully's assertion that they borrowed the Monterey Pop amps, used them and returned them shortly after, I knew that the Palo Alto Be-In had to be soon after the Monterey weekend of June 16-18. There was a big event on Wednesday, June 21, the Summer Solstice, so it seemed logical that the Dead would play the next weekend as well.

One of my eyewitnesses said he thought that the Palo Alto show was the day before Jimi Hendrix played for free in the Panhandle, and since that date was known to be Sunday, June 25, Saturday the 24th fit nicely.

The same eyewitness, a Palo Alto resident who went to most of the Be-Ins, couldn't remember whether it was the Dead or Big Brother. He admitted that it wasn't such a big deal to him: Jerry Garcia had been his guitar teacher, so although he liked the Dead, he had already seen them a bunch of times. He did distinctly recall the Sons Of Champlin, but now I think he was thinking of the 1968 show.

Various other people on Facebook posts and the like said that Big Brother played El Camino Park, which made it seem like they played. Based on Big Brother's schedule, the Palo Alto Be-In seemed the only likely candidate, so I figured they both played. It now seems that Palo Altans who recall Big Brother at El Camino were just imagining it. Big Brother did play a very obscure show at the relatively nearby Foothill Junior College, but it would be hard to mistake one place for the other.

11 comments:

Excellent sleuthing. Well done! I tried to track down my first rock and roll show and just had a piece of the puzzle given to me this weekend. My mother took the family to Hemisfair in San Antonio in 1968 and we saw a very hard and psychedelic band whose name had always escaped me. Met another man who was at the show this weekend in Dallas and it turns out that I was watching Roky Erickson and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, one of the preeminent Texas psych bands.

This is an exciting find for a few reasons - not just getting the right date, but also uncovering a nice newspaper review of a Dead park show. It also seems to be the only confirmed time that the New Delhi River Band played at the same show as the Dead.

Do you know if Sara Ruppenthal was still with the Anonymous Artists? There could have been all kinds of Dead-family reunions going on at this event...

So it seems that the photographer arrived at the show with the Dead, and stayed until the end, which is why there are no photos of the earlier bands.##########i have screenshot all 145 pics and they tell another story. The first pics show an almost empty park with maybe 20-30 folks in front of the stage ( still empty)Gradually you see more "hippies" arriving and during the next 30 pics there are 2 different bands on stage Then you see the Quippe Truck of the Dead arriving and 30 or so pics of the set-up and the show. What is next on the pics appears to be AAA. The last pics were snapped on leaving the park while there are still some 200 hundred folks near the stage

Uli, point taken on the photographer. From yoiur expert analysis, it's clear that he was there just about the whole time. Nonetheless, it seems that there was a focus on the Dead and AAA, and not the other bands.